Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Page 126

CXXIV
Some leaves are of irregular shape, occasionally reducing the area avail-
able for writing (593b f. 12, 593a f. 68). There are holes and tears which were
avoided by the scribe (e.g. 593b ff. 1, 28). A large part of f. 104r has been left
blank, presumably because of a lacuna or difficulty in the text in the exemplar
(Loth 1963, vii).
The pages are dark but mostly legible. The first and last pages of gatherings
often have a yellower, darker appearance than inner pages, doubtless because
they have been handled more. The ink occasionally shows through slightly
from the other side. The last few leaves of 593b and the first five of 593a are
particularly dark and difficult to read in ordinary light. F. 31 in 593b, the last
in that manuscript as it now is, has shrunk. It has also, as separate damage,
had most of its lower margin cut off, and the inner ends of the bottom three
lines of text on both sides. Holes and tears have occurred which have da-
maged the text in some places, e.g. 593b f. 12.
Full pages usually have 22-3 lines of text, but thirty-six have 24, and six-
teen have 21. There are no titles or chapter headings. Spaces have been left
for initials and headings at the beginnings of chapters, but they have not been
inserted, except for two initials (and these might be later additions). The
required initial has been indicated in the margin.
The manuscript is thought to have originated in the Vestfirðir in the fif-
teenth century (see below), but its history before c. 1609 is unknown.
There are some two dozen marginalia of one kind or another scattered
through the manuscript, of late date, in different hands, and often incomplete
or difficult to read. Some of them are names or words copied from the text. Others
are isolated letters or numbers. At 593b f. lv there is the uncompleted ‘þetta er
Spgu (sic) af’, and at 593a f. 2r ‘illur er pennfe]’ with an illegible continuation,
perhaps ‘þesse’. Part of the blank f. lr in 593b has been used for a confused
note by someone who had to learn to read the book at the age of eight:
ÞEssa bok þa atta eg at læra þa eg | var at Alldri 8 vetra gamall og var |
Mier j firstu Miog þung enn þo hef eg | Hana ecke lært sidan eg var 9
vetra | Ellegar adra Jslensku Er þetta so til | gamans parad Syd a apne
seint vm kueld (e obscurely written).
A statement of ownership and the personal names written in 593a have been
treated by Jónas Kristjánsson (1964, xlviii). They are:
þordur
ellen | s. The ‘ellen’ runs to the edge of the page, and the ex-
pected ‘ds’ was probably never written. There is space after
the ‘s’ in the next line. The writing looks the same as in the
82v
83r